Picked up the white suit Player this afternoon at Sam Goody, where there were three to choose from. As I suspected, the much-maligned paint wash doesn't bother me at all. There are two tiny areas, one on the back of the jacket near the bottom and another on the back of his left calf, where the wash collected and makes the suit look dingy. Other than that, it just looks like textured cloth.

The paint issues I saw figure-to-figure where on the hands and braclets, as MWC mentioned in his review. I managed to get one where the paint was about perfect, but the other two had significant issues.

The one complaint I do have is I didn't realize there was no bicep articulation. That's more a complaint about me for not noticing, I guess. The ball-jointed right wrist helps out with gun poses, but still, I would have liked cut biceps.

Another big plus is scale. Tony is currently standing alongside Mr. Blonde and they look great together. I suspect my lil' fre' would fit right into the Hellboy movie universe, too. I'm not notmally one for mixing displays, but Mezco's figures are an exception because they're all slightly...Mezco-ized. That signature stylistic overlay puts all of Mezco's figures, especially the movie stuff, in the same universe.

A universe I love.

They just need to stick to a scale. Scareface, Hellboy and Reservoir Dogs are 7" scale, but Austin Powers was 6" and The Warriors is going to be 10"! What's that about?

Just as an aside, has everyone been aware that we've had a review of him up for over a week?

I'm wondering how much gets updated here that people aren't aware of, and if it's a problem how to fix it.

J.

I wasn't aware of it, or of anything else in the Features section because, in the geek world, I think of reviews as reviews. Features, to me, would be a report on someone's experiences at SDCC, or something along those lines.

Maybe it's a problem with me, but I might think about changing Features to Reviews or Profiles.

Also, I miss stuff because only the major updates are put on the home page. I know, I know, most stuff is just a click away and either Julius or Jason post all updates here in the forums, but still. Mentioning all/most updates on the home page might be something to consider.

The big hurdle there is that I'm the only one at the moment doing all the final html formatting/ftp work. To constantly update the main page would basically be taking away from doing the features/news.

We do have the "what's new" link on the main page. That is where updates get mentioned.

Along these lines, do people check the news page? Should all updates just get a news mention? Maybe all news items longer than a paragraph get feature treatment with a link from news?

I'm just afraid that the page gets archived so quickly that people are missing things.

TNI does a useful thing when they have an article or a new picture gallery, they start a thread in the relevant forum section with a link to the article. I check the forum much more than the main page.

Do you want to be able to comment on the updates? We thought that having discussion up there would make it tough for people to see the new items.

Well, also because I don't check the "what's new" forum several times a day like I do the rest of the board, mainly because of the no comments thing. I want to be able to discuss the stories. Also there's no incentive to check new posts there every time I come in because they'll still be up the next day, and every day after that(and I don't need more excuses to procrastinate ).

My suggestion is: Don't make it an option to comment in the "What's New" section, but instead of new threads for every new article(or at least in addition to) how about a weekly "What's new" update with collected links to the new articles and reviews? The rationale being that people can check to see if there might be something interesting they missed because it's not from a category that is one of their prime interests and will be less likely to just pass over the story link with their eyes as they look for an article that IS in their interest(removing that one extra barrier to the link)

That in addition to also doing individual threads w/links in the relevant sections(toy biz stuff in toybiz, mezco in All About the Toys, whatever) for people to comment on. The great asset of writing for a news site with a message board would be to hear feedback on every article or review you write, I should think.

The biggest hurdle to that kind of stuff as stated before is that the overall updating comes down to me, with the majority of the content coming from Julius and Cubanzod. All of us have full time jobs, so just trying to get the main page or what's new updated is a chore without having to post again in the respective threads.

I don't want this to come off as whining; it's just when the updates are hitting I'm trying to get them up at lunch or before work as fast as possible before the boss comes looking over my shoulder. Good thing I have an understanding boss...

Going forward, we are looking into some sort of automation, whether it be PHP or SSI or whatever.

Well the great thing about posting new threads for each article is that you can make it the responsibility of the article's author, since posting a topic with a link doesn't require any substantial technical skill.